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Express Lube & Car Wash:
Adaptability Maintains Edge
By Jim and Elaine Norland
Match your business plan’s figures on time and you have a winner. Do it in one third the projected time and you have a real eye opener. Industry newcomers Jeff and Lisa Jones did just that with Express Lube & Car Wash in Brunswick, GA. They met their three-year goals in just one year.
They have their anchor store at a high-traffic location on Cypress Mill Road, opened in early 1995, and a second store on New Jesup Highway opened in 2002. Both are thriving locations. The first is a
full-service tunnel operation and the other a glass enclosed in-bay automatic wash on a shopping-center out-parcel. Both locations offer quick lube and related car care services.
The research and lessons the Joneses learned have also been incorporated into a business plan package that they sell to other startups.
Their success is more impressive because neither had prior experience in car care. After many job relocation moves over the previous 20 years, the couple was living in Brunswick, a small community of around 15,000 residents, in 1993. Jeff was freshly unemployed as a corporate human relations VP while Lisa continued as an executive with UPS.
They were tired of moving, liked Brunswick, and soon realized a new opportunity might be waiting for them right there. Poor results on their own cars at a local full-service car wash convinced them of the need.
“We began to research the car wash business,” Jeff Jones recalls. “Over the next two years I did a lot of due diligence and research. I joined the International Carwash Association and attended their national convention in Chicago and met some experienced operators. One had recently opened a quick lube and car wash combination in Orlando.”
Soon thereafter Jeff and Lisa attended an Orlando meeting of oil change operators and toured some new car wash and quick lube stores. “This really made sense. We liked what this offered consumers in terms of one-stop car service. We realized that the customer of a car wash or oil change center was really the same customer, one who cared about his or her vehicle and was willing to spend money on that care.”
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